I am a little lost here and I want to know which one is the best way to do it
I have a website using WordPress with All in One Seo and xml in 3 languages with their sitemaps:
website.com/sitemap.xml (default in spanish)
website.com/en/sitemap.xml (english version)
website.com/pt-br/sitemap.xml
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First what is the best practice to put in the robots.txt, to put just one line (website.com/sitemap.xml) or the 3 sitemap urls? (also the xpml plugin automatic add a
rel="alternate" hreflang="x"in each page with the link to the translated page) -
For Google Webmaster Tools what are the best practices?
- submit the 3 sitemaps
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submit just 1 sitemap and hope google understand the translation with the use of
rel="alternate" hreflang="x" -
or create 3 different accounts, 1 for each language?
From technical point of view it’s easier both for you and us (Google) if you work with one sitemap, as you will create only one file, and we have to process only one file. This leads to increased performance.
From analytical point of view, it’s much better if you create 3 different sitemaps and you submit them through Search Console (former Webmaster Tools), because you get reporting for each in the sitemaps module, which lets you debug things easier with your sitemaps.
If you add rel-alternate-hreflang, for us it really doesn’t matter which path you choose; pick the one that’s easier for you!